This invention relates to the field of emergency rescue. More particularly, a rescue board for extricating victims from mass casualty or ice rescue incidents is presented.
In the field of emergency rescue, it is often necessary to extricate victims from dangerous surroundings, buildings on fire, the water or near or underneath broken ice in lakes, ponds or rivers. The most commonly used device is a rescue board, which is usually a flat, sturdy board designed to carry a victim to an ambulance or other safe area.
Most flat rescue boards are designed to load the victim onto the board once the victim has been accessed. In some instances, such as when the victim is in a crashed car or in icy water, the board can also be used to extricate the victim from the emergency situation in the first instance. In the particular emergency where the victim has fallen through ice on a lake, pond, river or other body of water, it would be highly desirable to have a rescue board that is not only capable of transporting the victim once loaded onto the board but that may also be used to extricate the victim from the emergency environment initially. It is a main object of this invention to provide a rescue board that may be used to extricate a victim from a dangerous environment and to then transport the victim to safety.
A good example of one type of rescue board is found in the 1988 patent issued to Rudy, U.S. Pat. No. 4,736,474. Rudy disclosed a rescue transportation device in the form of a solid board 12 having hand lift openings 13. The hand lift openings in Rudy are round and are located near the left and right front and rear of the board. Rudy utilizes a number of straps 22, 24, 26, and 28 to secure the victim to the board. Once strapped to the board, the victim can be carried to the ambulance or other safe location. The Rudy rescue board would be very useful in locations where the victim is open to the rescuers but would be more difficult to use where the victim is not open to the rescuers, such as under or inside a crashed vehicle or floating near the surface of an otherwise ice-covered body of water. It is an object of this invention to create a rescue board where the rescuers are able to load the victim onto the board and secure the victim to the board even when the victim is in an area where he is not easily accessible.
Other innovative attempts have been made to create useful rescue devices for loading and carrying a victim to safety during a rescue. Kidd disclosed a casualty transfer system for ship-to-shore transfer of victims and for mountain rescues in his 1980 U.S. Pat. No. 4,183,110. The Kidd device comprises a reinforced plastic shell that is buoyant and protects the victim by surrounding him with the protective shell. Recognizing the difficulty with mountain rescues or rescues that require transporting the victim over longer distances, Kidd disclosed that steel skids or runners could be used over rough ground or on snow or ice. Kidd's device would be good for transporting the victim once the victim is loaded onto the rescue device, but would be cumbersome if the extrication of the victim had to be made under icy water or other difficult conditions. It is another object of this invention to provide a rescue board that may be slipped under a victim who is not easily accessible that also has runners for use on snow or ice.
A rescue board must meet certain basic criteria to be useful in rescues. First, it must be lightweight enough to be easily carried by rescuers but should be sturdy enough to carry victims whether they be small children or fully grown adults. Secondly, a rescue board must have a way to secure the victim to the board to some degree and handgrips for the rescuer to use when he carries the victim to safety. It would also be desirable if the rescue board had rails or skids for dragging the loaded victim to safety over ice or other terrain. Finally, it would be highly desirable if the rescue board could also be slipped under the victim in the emergency environment so that the victim could be extricated while secured in some fashion to the board. It is an object of this invention to provide such a rescue board.
Other and further objects of this invention will become obvious upon reading the below described disclosure of the invention.